It is 2.30am, but long past closing time the bar of the Green Man is full of the members of a would-be carp fishing party. As they wait in vain for the arrival of the driver, their resentment rises with the level of alcohol running through their veins. My, can these boys bitch - mostly about each other.
New writing is still pretty thin on the ground beyond the large metropolitan theatres, but the Drum in Plymouth is one of the few smaller stages that is carving out a niche for itself. This production is the latest from Doug Lucie, who during the 1980s took the faintly beating pulse of the nation with a string of biliously entertaining dramas such as Progress, Hard Feelings and Fashion. The latter presciently demonstrated what a lethal combination politics and marketing men would prove. Then Lucie went mysteriously out of fashion.
He is unlikely to bounce back with this bittersweet 90-minute comedy, which, for all its deliciously acid dialogue and comfortable entertainment value, never makes it entirely clear just what he is carping on about. It could be any number of things: the male menopause, male competitiveness, or simply why being 40-plus and disappointed is shit. Or it could be the encroaching ubiquity of the theme pub. There are plenty of things to get annoyed about, but theme pubs are one of life's irritations, not a cause.
Even if Lucie is grappling with all these things, they are not enough to carry an evening that lacks real ballast and a moral centre. The play fizzles out with a mobile telephone call - surely modern drama's most overused device.
Simon Stokes's production is sharp and snappy. It is sizzlingly acted, particularly by Phil Daniels as loner Lou, a man who has kept his integrity and lost a life in the process, and Danny Webb as Mitch, a successful businessman with Neanderthal views who sees himself as a very big fish in a pond full of minnows. Like all men, Mitch knows that size really matters.
· Until November 30. Box office: 01752 267222.
